Reagan Going On Offensive For Pentagon Budget

February 17, 1986|By George de Lama, Chicago Tribune.

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. — Faced with severe fiscal restraints and a rebellious Congress, President Reagan is set to embark on a new public campaign to push his proposed increase in defense spending, White House officials say.

The public relations blitz, featuring a series of speeches by Reagan over the next two weeks and new recommendations for holding down spending on procurements, is partly designed to refute charges of Pentagon waste and inefficiency.

The speaking campaign also is meant to show that Reagan ``is going to pull out all the stops`` and not compromise early on his defense budget, officials said.

Aides to Reagan said the President will kick off the effort on Thursday when he visits the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada.

In a ceremony certain to receive worldwide media coverage, Reagan plans to make an impassioned plea for greater spending for U.S. military forces in a speech from the campus of the American medical school on the island.

The campus was the scene of heavy fighting in 1983 when U.S. military forces invaded Grenada, rescued the medical students on the island and toppled a Marxist ruling junta.

Reagan plans to invoke the invasion as a justification for continuing his military build-up, stressing what he will portray as the need to counter communism and defend democracy abroad, White House aides said.

In addition, sources said Reagan was considering using the occasion of the Grenada visit to formally announce his planned request for about $100 million in military aid to anticommunist Nicaraguan rebels.

Beyond his four-hour visit to Grenada, Reagan is scheduled to deliver a nationally televised speech about defense, probably on Feb. 26, White House officials said.

In his budget for fiscal 1987, Reagan requested $320 billion in budget authority for defense spending, an increase over the $286 billion the Pentagon received last year.

With new budgetary restraints under the Gramm-Rudman balanced budget law, defense spending is the only major item in the President`s budget that is slated for an increase. Most social spending programs, by contrast, are earmarked for cuts or elimination in the Reagan budget.

Reagan`s nationally televised speech is to be followed on Feb. 28 by release of the first interim report of a presidential commission created last year to investigate defense procurement procedures and to seek new ways to trim costs and cut out waste.

The commission, head by David Packard, former deputy defense secretary, occupies a central part of the White House strategy to gain approval of its defense spending proposals, some Reagan aides said.

``The feeling that people over at the Pentagon are just throwing money away has certainly hurt us,`` said one senior White House official.

Reagan himself took the offensive on the defense waste issue last week, ridiculing Pentagon critics at a political fundraiser in St. Louis.

``I know that you have been treated for the last several years to a drumbeat of propaganda that would picture the Defense Department as a bloated four-star general sitting on a bag of money,`` Reagan told a cheering Republican audience. ``Let me tell you that is pure propaganda.``

The President asserted that ``most of our weapons systems are now coming in ahead of schedule and under the original asking price instead of coming in with a cost override.``

As part of the administration`s effort to keep the political heat on Congress, the Pentagon last week chastised lawmakers for not approving proposed closings of military bases that would have saved some $300 million.

Pentagon officials hoped that by focusing attention on key legislators`

reluctance to close military bases located in their home districts, the administration could accuse Congress of being the major obstacle to trimming fat from the defense budget.

White House aides do not underestimate the political difficulties Reagan will face in seeking approval for increased defense spending at a time of budget cutbacks, and some privately doubt he will ultimately be able to prevail.

``I think there`s a strong consensus out there in the country for keeping our defenses strong, but I think most people would only approve of keeping it at the level we`re already spending,`` said one senior White House official, who asked to not be identified.